Pagan Metaphysics

Pagan Metaphysics is written by Paul Reid-Bowen, a lecturer in Religions, Philosophies and Ethics at Bath Spa University (UK). His research and teaching interests encompass metaphysics, existentialism, ecological and feminist philosophy, and a number of new religious movements (notably pagan, nature and feminist religions).

Sunday, 16 July 2017

Well, in news unrelated to ecological collapse and the
crisis of civilization, Jodie Whittaker has been announced as the latest
regeneration of Doctor Who. Now I daresay that there are many who may be viewing
this little cultural event as the end of their
worlds (and/or a sign of the destruction of British values, the triumph of
liberalism, ‘political correctness gone mad’ etc., etc.), but as a long-time
Whovian, it seems a pretty solid choice to me. My seven year-old son, who can
identify any type of Cyberman at a glance (and can categorise people’s year of
birth by whichever doctor was in role at the time), is fine with it; and so is
my daughter. Admittedly this doctor will be the shortest and is also from West
Yorkshire, and clearly such physical and social/cultural factors can make a
difference. But there have been quite a few Northerners in the role, and, come on,
Sylvester McCoy was only one cm taller. So there aren’t any major issues here.
I just hope Jodie is made of stern stuff. The forthcoming social media, vitriol-fest
will likely be a truly depressing sight to behold. I wonder if poor Peter
Davidson could have withstood the Twitterstorm that would have followed his
replacement of Tom Baker. Personally, I just hope the scripts and stories are
good.

Wednesday, 5 July 2017

This
is a talk I gave at the recent CenSAMM Climate and Apocalypse conference on
29th June, an amazing two-day event, with an excellent programme of
international speakers. The full programme can be accessed here, with the
individual sections being slowly rolled out over the next few days.

My
talk starts a little abruptly in this section, the first sentence is: ‘My proposal today is that the ways in which we frame and
mythologize our current age may require serious reassessment ...’

Saturday, 4 February 2017

Thursday, 26 January 2017

My suggestion from November 9th 2016 that the Doomsday Clock was running slow and needed correcting now seems to have been agreed upon by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the clock has moved 30 seconds closer to doomsday. Full story here.

Unfortunately, there can't be much satisfaction in predicting the apocalypse.

Wednesday, 25 January 2017

Well, day four of the US Endarkenment Project and if the above story is even remotely true, then the president's new thought police are to be commended on the speed of their assault on, and appropriation of, the state apparatus of knowledge, science and environmental protection (an incredibly impressive epistemic "blitzkrieg"). I suspect that by day ten all references to climate science, global warming, ecological degradation, the environment, pollution etc. will have been expunged from government institutions; while other sources of knowledge production and dissemination (universities and academia, for example) may take a few weeks longer. But don't worry, soon you will be told what to say and think. The new government is clearly committed to unburdening its citizenry of the troublesome complexities and distractions of experts, scientists and whinging liberals. For every inconvenient truth/fact, the new government seems to have a nice alternative fact to make the transition easier.

More here, here and probably in many other places over the next few weeks, before the US goes completely dark.

Monday, 23 January 2017

Lest I become too positive and complacent following Saturday's marches and protests, Desdemona Despair has usefully delivered its fifty doomiest stories of 2016.

22 January 2017 (Desdemona Despair) – For a long time, Desdemona has
feared that when the effects of global warming become obvious to
everyone, governments will shut down our Earth observation science, so
that collectively, the human species can bury its head in the sand.

The year 2016 saw huge strides toward this goal of dismantling science and blinding us all. The May government in the UK and the Turnbull government in Australia defunded their climate science research programs. In the U.S., the Trump team declared that they are seeking quick ways of withdrawing from the Paris agreement on climate change, and that NASA Earth science will be defunded. Scientists undertook a desperate effort to copy public climate data from government servers, in the event that Trump’s climate denialists order its destruction.

The
most ominous threat to science rose in the advanced economies, as
ultra-nationalist populism captured the governments of the U.S. and the
Philippines, and threatened the social democracies of Europe. Surely,
the doomiest story of 2016 was the ascension of Donald Trump’s
antiscience forces. Trump leads the vanguard of reactionary politics
that rejects the expertise of thousands of scientists globally, substituting random opinions from blogs and “alt-right” propaganda mills.

With
murderous force, reactionary parties oppose efforts to reduce carbon
emissions and to preserve indigenous lands: 2016 saw the assassination
of numerous defenders of the natural world, including Honduran activists
Berta Cáceres and Nelson García. The government of Cambodia banned a film about murdered rainforest activist, Chut Wutty, and the UN declared that governments globally are undertaking an extraordinary war on freedom of expression.

For the fifty top stories of environmental and eco-political doom and despair, read on here.